Switched on Pop - Drake vs Drake

Episode Date: September 6, 2018

Drake, per usual, has been inescapable this summer. "In My Feelings" and "Nice For What" top the charts, but there's depth to these bangers. We argue for hearing one as a meditation on fragile masculinity, the other as a paean to NOLA Bounce. Continue the conversation with us on Instagram and Twitter: @SwitchedOnPop Songs discussed:Drake - In My FeelingsDrake - Nice For WhatLauryn Hill - Ex FactorThe Showboys - Drag Rap (Triggaman)Cameron Paul - Brown BeatCheeky Blakk - Let Me Get That OutchaBeyonce ft. Big Freedia - FormationBig Freedia - Karaoke ft Lizzo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Discover it now and let you get involved for their essence. Welcome to Switch on Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan.

I'm your pal, Charlie Harding. And we are recording live in Los Angeles after a summer of pop hits of yore from the Beach Boys to Beyonce. We have many milestones to celebrate one of which is that you actually live in Los Angeles now

and we are going to be doing this in person, no longer a long distance relationship. It's very exciting. We'll see if the show can survive it. The other exciting thing is that today we get to talk about probably the biggest tracks of the summer. And they're both by Drake.

Drake versus Drake. Yes, two of the 500 tracks off his latest album, Scorpion. Yeah. And we're each going to dig into one of them. These songs have been inescapable all summer, but hopefully you've never thought about them like this.

Charlie, can I kick it off? Yes, please. What do you go? All right. In my feelings, let's listen to the hook. Kiki, do you love me? Are you riding? Say you never ever leave.

I want you. And I need you. And I'm down for you. Always KB. Do you love me? Are you riding? And I need you. And I'm down for you.

There's a lot. There's a lot going on in this track. But for our discussion, we're just focused on this hook. Not that there's not more to say about the song, great outro, all sorts of fascinating stuff happening with the drumbeads, but we're just going to look at this hook. Okay. Because to me, this hook captures the essence of this song, which in my mind is all like a meditation on masculinity. Oh, wow.

Fascinating. Because the very first thing we hear in the song is Drake saying, in my feelings, I gotta keep it real. And to me, the song is absolutely a battle of trying to keep it real in the sense of being honest and not keeping in your feelings the way macho culture teaches us to.

This is why I moved to California was to learn how to have feelings. It's been really important for me. All right. Then pay attention to the following. Okay. Because I think this song in some ways is a battle between Drake being able to express his feelings, be in his feelings.

Yeah. and the sort of sociocultural forces that tell men, no, keep your feelings inside. Wow. Oh my gosh. I'm so thrilled. I don't know how you're going to accomplish this in this little chorus. Well, it all starts with the chord progression that's underlying this hook. Okay. Let's just listen to the very beginning of the hook for a second. Kiki Do you love me

Are you writing Say you never ever I want you And I need you And I'm down for you Always KB Let's just focus in On that background part

The more harmonic part Of this song That goes Da da da I didn't even notice You just like Broadwayed this whole thing One

Beautiful Let's just zoom in On that part By isolating just those chords For a second Ooh yeah You just made a face Tell me about that face.

It's like it's crunchy and sweet at the same time. These are really deep chords. They're extended. They've got a lot of chromatic notes in them, something we've talked about before that gives chords like this kind of spacey kind of open sound. And there's something else kind of strange going on here because basically we're oscillating between two chords. A D flat chord and a C minor chord. If we even simplify this groove a little bit,

you can hear how it's just moving from a D-flat chord to a C minor chord. So this is like the simple version of this sample. Okay. Well, that's so all disguised because those two chords are a very dissonant step away from each other. They're too close. They're right next to each other, one note away. And typically you think that they're going to step on each other and create suspense in a bad way. Yeah.

Like the minor second interval is the jaw's interval. Right, right. It usually creates angstiness. Well, in this case, I still hear an uncertainty here, Charlie. And it's, I mean, as you point out, I think it's because these chords are right next to each other in a way that's kind of odd. And in the case of like a Jaws soundtrack would make you feel really uncomfortable. It still does make me feel uncomfortable. And I think this is our first, like, hurdle of masculinity in the song is the challenge to be, like, okay with that uncertainty and the openness of.

of these chords. And I have one more piece of evidence in favor of this interpretation, which is that there's something even more uncomfortable going on with these harmonies. As I said, we move from D flat to C minor. But I don't think we could say that either of those chords are like the key of this song, the home,

the tonal center of this song. Oh, okay, I think I know where you're going with this. I had to notice this, yeah. Yeah, in fact, the tonal center of this song is a chord that we never hear. Huh. And that is, Big Reveal, A-flat major. Ooh.

Like, that feels great, right? That's the home we've been missing in this whole song. Yeah. So just to be clear, we never hear that chord. Right. That's the phantom chord in this song. Yeah. And I think, again, the challenge for Drake and the challenge for us listening is to, like, be okay with not having that closure.

Oh, yeah. being open to change in possibility and in the case of this song to be like open to getting into your feelings. This is the same technique we talked about actually on our last episode about Beyonce's crazy in love in which in the chorus there is similarly no resolve and we talked about that creating a real sort of sense of heat in the track. Right. So it's like the same technique being used to a very different end. Yeah. Because if in Beyonce, Katie Perry, etc., that sense of of like tonal uncertainty was used to create tension and vibration and like heat up the dance floor.

Yeah. Here it's being used to create a different kind of tension, a tension of like. Almost like lost suspension. Where do I belong? Precisely. The uncertainty of my feelings. And then we're hearing that throughout the song.

We're hearing that, da da da, da. I also like in the chords, they have sort of one chord lands. You get that nice little melody. And then you get a change in the harmonic rhythm, where the second chord, plays this really neat rhythm that supports the underlying. Oh, I see, right.

That kind of pulse. Let's spin that one more time. So each chord sort of has its own personality as well based on how the rhythm is played. Yeah, exactly. So harmonically, I think the song has an uncertainty that Drake is really capitalizing on to have this message of fighting in and against masculinity. Yeah. All right.

Second way this hook captures this is the structure. of the melody. And I'm talking like Drake's main line, Kiki, do you love me? Because we just listen to the full hook, but actually this is almost like, it's cool, it's like a cellular hook. And what I mean by that is we can kind of divide it up into four melodic sections. So let's take it one section at a time. Let's just start with what I hear as kind of the first cell of this hook. Okay. Kiki, do you love me? Are you writing? Say you never ever leave.

Okay, that's cell one, right? That's like a firm, coherent melodic idea. And then we're going to get one that's very similar. This is cell two, but it's slightly different. So almost the same, but a slight melodic variation. Yeah. Okay, so say we've got cell one, cell two. Now cell three is going to be exactly the same as cell one.

Okay. So A, B, A, or like A, A, part A. Oh, yeah. Let's use screw numbers. Let's use letters. A, B, A. Okay. So here's A, too. Okay. So A, B, and then we expect maybe at this point another B, right? Right. Because we've had two identical A's, and now it would logically, I guess, like, ask for another B. But that's not what we get. Okay. And he goes down. Yeah. You hear there's just a slight variation there. Let's put the two B sections back to back for a sec. Okay. It's so minute me because I want you and I need you. Yeah.

From beside me because I want you and I need you and I'm down for you always. It's so minute, but there's a point where his voice drops down. Right. Da da da da da da. Yeah. And that changes everything to me because all the sudden. we've gone from like pure mathematical formula which in this extended analogy I'm making would be rigid masculinity. But he does this deviation right where he goes down into his feelings and sort of like

shows his ability to defer from the norm. So it's a very small moment but one that seems significant every time that chorus comes around. This is a really fun way to hear it. Because it could just be the same exact thing, right? It could be the same exact melody, but no, there's that small variation. I think there's like a world of meaning in that. You know, obviously these decisions as they're happening in the studio

are probably entirely coming from a place of intuition, but I don't think that matters. I think we can still hear it in this way and dig out whatever meaning it means to us, because certainly in my feelings has underneath these issues of how

do I get in touch with my feelings. No, no, I don't mean to say that this was all meticulously plotted by Drake, Tramoney Benny 40 and Black and Mild, the producers of this song. I think, as you said, these things happen naturally as you're in the studio making a song, and then, you know, people like us can come along and hyper-analize it to death. And if someone else out there has another reading, I'd love to hear it. But for now, let's continue. Okay, next we get to a really important element.

of this song, and I think one that will continue to talk about, which is the influence of New Orleans Bounce on this song. New Orleans Bounce is a style that's been around since the 80s. It's like hyper, frenetic, super percussive features like really in your face, often like screamed vocals. It is music to get you on the dance floor and partying all day long on a second line wherever. It's like it gets you, it's so pumped up. And I think we'll talk about it's very associated with queer and other marginalized voices, right? So in this sense, I wonder if we can read all these like incursions of New Orleans bounce into the very demure harmonies that we heard earlier as sort of like those voices, those non-normative voices saying like, no, Drake,

get in your feelings. Don't be afraid. You know, come with us and explore this side. Because they're always there in the background. Like if we listen to the hook, we'll hear the voices. of Magnolia Shorty and City Girls to, you know, very well-known bounce acts, one a little older, and unfortunately, Magnolia Shorty, no longer with us. City Girls, very much of the moment. And we can hear these female bounce voices, like entreating Drake to come into his feelings. Not only that, there are some moments in the song where the whole fabric kind of rips open and bounce, like, emerges into the fore.

Yeah. And here's what I mean. Let's let's go to the first time I hear we have like a bounce insurgency, kind of breaking the texture of the song. Before we move forward, I want to go back and hear those sort of sneaky voices that are in the background. Okay, great. Yeah, let's listen to the hook again. And this time focus in on the female voices shouting in the background. Especially in the second half here. love me are you riding say you never have a look and I need your right saying let's go let's go let's go to me that's like let's go get in our feelings let's go abandon the norms of masculinity yeah and then I think as the song progresses that bounce feeling is constantly trying to like assert itself yeah this happens three times okay the first time is towards the beginning of the song and all the sudden

those beautiful chords we heard just break down into like a pure clapping text Yeah. Let's listen to that. And I'm down for you always But the new me is really still to bring me I swear you gotta feel me Before they try and kill me They gotta make some choices They run it out of option

Because I've been going off And they don't know when it's stopping And when you get the top And I see that you been in there So that relentless clapping Kind of a trademark of the bounce sound Yes But not like the not the most serious

Bounce takeover yet No, no no no We get claps throughout All sorts of different genres of hip hop Right. This is just the first wave though. Yeah. If we go to the middle of the song, we get a slightly longer and more intense bounce interjection. And I'm down for your always.

It's a bad bitches and we're kissing in a wave. Kissing, kissing in a way. I need that black card and a cold to the safe. Cold to the safe. Cold, cold to the safe. I show him how to net work. Fucking net flip to chill. What's your net, net, net, network. It's a great verse. Right? So this amazing bounce. incursion for Magnolia, Shorty, and City Girls. But then we're back into the dominant texture of the song. So it's like, once again, I hear bounce and non-heteronormitivity, like trying to assert itself. And then getting pushback.

But then the third bounce insurrection happens. I'm going to guess it's undeniable. Let's hear it. That is a classic bounce breakdown. Yeah. It's so exciting and pumps you up so much. And then what happens after? words is interesting too because now after this third like bounce takeover yeah it seems to like have

installed itself into the heart of the song and it's saying like yes you will get in your feelings yes you will abandon this macho nonsense and allow yourself to be like a deep person who's in touch with their emotions so it's like to me i love the arc of this song in that respect one two three bounce explosions and finally we like reach this point of catharsis at the end. Wow. That's all you got. Yeah, that's all I got, Charles. That's a beautiful thing.

I spent a lot of time getting deep into bounce music and getting to know the sound, something I was not that familiar with before these Drake tracks. And I'm excited to go into the next song because I think it does an amazing job at paying homage to bounce music. And I want to go in some of that history, those sounds, how we can identify bounce. And this is important because, you know, Drake has a sort of difficult record with using music of other cultures and how he cites or does not cite. But I think that this is a pretty phenomenal example of just doing it right.

I can't wait to hear more. Second half. Take a quick break. We'll check in with our feelings and see you on the other side. I'm excited to have a little therapy session. All right, perfect. Convierce your passion in a business with Shopify

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of a month in Shopify. Immigration may be Donald Trump's signature issue. President Trump is now targeting predominantly democratic cities for ice raids and deportations. Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration and customs enforcement agents in Minneapolis Tuesday. We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security, period?

I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE. When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want border at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds I think one of the things that Drake does at his best

Is highlighting the other artists and producers Who inform the music that he's making Yeah And on Nice for What he does exactly that With your phone out, got to hit them Ago With your phone out Snap it like you Fabo And you show and no

But it's all right And you're showing no But it's all right. This is a great track. This is the other bounce-style track on the 732 track off of Scorpion. It's just going to keep expanding. Yeah, it gets longer.

And like, with both of these are fully in the Nola Bounce tradition. And here we've got another track produced by folks, he worked with a lot. We got Merta Beats, Noah 40 Shabeeb, and Corey Litwin. But really important is that

this track is also produced by DJ Black and Mild, who is a Nola Bounce staple and includes voices from Big Frida and Fifth War Weeby, who are just sort of like the pantheon of bounce. Yeah, Black and Mild also responsible for the bounce sections of In My Feelings. Yeah, cool. I don't have a deconstruction of toxic masculinity to bring to this track, but I do think that this has a lot to teach us about other really important history.

And frankly, it's just a really hot song. I think the first thing that you're going to notice is, the background sample. And this is a really fun Lauren Hill sample from X Factor. And Drake takes this and makes it upbeat, makes it a little chipmunk solely. So in the 20th anniversary of Lauren Hill's, you know, an extraordinary single album. This is a good sample to grab. And underneath it, the song has a really powerful female empowerment message.

he tries to really relate to the experience of what it's like having to display oneself in a certain way sort of to the male gays. Right, right. Oh, there is a whole bunch of toxic masculinity in this song. Man, we're getting deep here. So he's just one of my favorite lyrics. You got it made. everything. You're an independent person. And when you're taking photos, it's all about just being

the great version of you. It's not about the expectation on the other side. It's a nice message. Cool. Yeah, I did not see that reading, but I like it and I love how it dovetails with in my feelings. Keep it going. Most importantly, as we were alluding to earlier, this song just overwhelmingly celebrates bounce music. And I'm not a historian of bounce music. I really just loved getting deep into the music and thought it would be fun to share some of the references and how Drake takes those and celebrates them in any situation where you're distilling and massifying any culture, it will be necessarily reductive and there will be issues that are fraught. I by no means think that I can bring a complete perfect narrative into the history of balance

and whether or not we can sort of assess Drake did it right or the wrong way. I think that's probably left more to the originators of that music. No doubt. You know, these tracks did bring a whole new genre into my ears that I didn't know about. So I want to share that and show how the references, I think, actually engage us to want to go and find out more. Cool. All right. Take me there.

So to get started, we have to know a little bit more about the origins of bounce. As you said, developed in New Orleans in the late 1980s. And it draws from a lot of different musical traditions, in particular. we can hear the call and response style of the Mardi Gras Indians. When we were talking about all of those girls in the background singing to Drake, that has a little bit of that sort of call and response nature. And so that is extremely important in bounce music. Also important is that it stems really from just a couple of core samples that run throughout

the whole tradition of bounce. There are a couple of rhythms that are just totally essential. And so the first one is from The Showboys. It's the drag rap beat, also called the Trigger Man beat. Check this out. Yeah. Wow. The other essential beat is Cameron Paul's Brown beat.

Whoa, very different, but equally funky. And you're probably wondering how in the world are we going to get back to Drake, but just bear with me for a second. I have faith. I have faith. Also an important sound, and actually you got it in... in my feelings is the clap sound. Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So there was a great bounce artist named Cheeky Black who was known for the handclaps in her music. Wow, yeah, and that's such a distinctive feeling to me because it's just like, I don't know, the way that comes to mind is like relentless. It doesn't let you chill. Yeah. And at first it can be like almost a little panic inducing, to be honest. But then I think once you break through and you just like let yourself. go and sort of submit to that. It's like really liberating actually. Totally. And these three sounds together are these sort of essential building blocks at which bounce comes out.

As it develops, it also, as you brought out, becomes a important point of musical expression for drag and trans performers. The best known of these performers is Big Frida, who has come to popular culture through a number of important references. And Big Frida, when asked about what makes bounce, bounce. Yeah. She says, bounce has to have call and response. It's got to be high energy, dance driven,

must be booty shaking. High tempo, bass heavy. And bounce is interactive. Bounce is an essential dance music. So probably the place that a lot of people first heard bounce was through the mass popularization of twerking, which comes from bounce music. And so, Miley Cyrus did this in like 2013. at the VMAs and it became a sort of viral sensation

and was appropriately accused of cultural appropriation. But maybe a better reference point to when we start to hear bounce more in mainstream popular culture was on Beyonce's formation. Oh, wow, right. The track I've not thought of as bounce, but certainly has those elements and I believe has a music video filmed in New Orleans too. Cool, let's spin that, yeah. So formation in its extended form in that music video,

in New Orleans, which is really powerful. In the extended version, we get the voice of Big Frida. I did not come to play with you hold. Plot thickens. I came to sleigh, bitch. I like carmorrheds and collard greens, bitch. Oh, yes, you best to believe it. And we hear Big Frida where, at the top of, Nice for What?

I want to know who my fucking representing it here tonight. Hold on, hold on. Cool. Right. So Big Frida has been in sort of the mass consciousness for a little while and is an important citation because really is one of the major local stars in the local New Orleans bounce scene. Learning all this was really important to me because when I first heard these tracks and people said, these are derivative of bounce.

I was like handclaps, 808s, sort of, you know, ubiquitous sounds throughout the world of hip-hop. So, like, what makes this sound this sound? Yeah, yeah. Right? I think it could just sort of pass you by. Now, of course, what's important is the relationship to those sounds and how they develop and how people's relationship to them and their constant reference makes a culture.

So it's all about the actual relationships to those things. And what I think Drake does so well is he drops all of these clues in his track that excite you to go discover more about the music. So I want to uncover within Nice for What, what are those essential bounce elements. And many of them you're going to hear were also in my feelings. But now that we understand the sort of historical context of those sounds, maybe we'll be a little bit more interested. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want that specificity. So the first important thing is that he builds Nice for What off of one of those samples.

Remember, bounce music is built off of these sort of two sort of fundamental samples. Oh yeah, wait, I remember one. Triggerman. Triggerman beat. And... Brown beat. Brown beat. Yeah. Which one? This is the Trigger Man beat.

Cool. Let's listen to Trigger Man one more time. Yeah. Okay, so that's the inspiration. Cool. Here's Drake's rendition. He might be thinking, I'm not hearing it. Like, you know, there's a lot happening.

There's a lot happening in that beat. The samples are in there. I hear something. I love this moment, though, because this clip that I grabbed is actually sort of towards the under the track, all the rest of the elements sort of drop out. You know, there's still some of that sample in there. And then it's just a naked 808 drum machine playing this rhythm. Let's hear it one more time.

The Trigger Man rhythm. Yeah. Okay. He's isolating this. I think as if to say like, yo, listen up. This is important. Yeah, no, I could hear that. And especially in the scratches, I think.

You can, for me, that's like the clear link back to the original sample. Definitely a link back to earlier hip-hop. And still, if these are a little too clashy, you're not. not hearing it, I just had to mash them up for you. Okay, hit me. Hit me. Yeah, okay, I'm convinced. I hear the Trigger Man beat in the background and I see how, as you said,

this is a moment where maybe they're kind of revealing, pulling the curtain back a little of it and saying like, hey, check out the DNA of the song. And if you want more, go off and check out Trigger Man and all these other artists. It's got to have that da, da, da, da, da, da. Yeah, totally. Right? Totally. And so what you might not have noticed is that the track that you broke down,

samples the other popular beat, that brown beat. No way. No, I did notice that. Yeah, yeah. So here's the brown beat. Hot beat. Oh, yeah. Here it is mashed up together with In My Feelings.

Slow down a little bit. All right, that was cool. That was really cool. You just taught me something about that song. I love it. And when you're listening to Nice for What, if you're listening all the way through, all of a sudden there's this drum beat that gets played.

And for me, that's when I was like, oh, I need to go listen to me. I've got to find what that is. So the other, of course, the essential element had on your track as well is that just unbelievable breakdown. Yes. The bounce breakdown. That just sends my heart rate up like 20 vpm instantly. Absolutely. I love it.

And it has that opportunity to say sort of, you know, hate dancers, get on the floor, move it. It's the opportunity for the dancers to fill in the space of the track. If you're actually in a club in New Orleans and that section's happening, it's for the dancers. Oftentimes the break in a track isn't necessarily made for people to dance to. Of course, you know, obviously like the history of hip-hop is made from breaks. But a lot of those sections in modern music are just kind of like, all right, well, we need some space, get to the next thing, let it breathe. And here, this is an instruction for somebody to participate, to do something. It moves beyond just the performer.

So what do you think? Do you think that this track works well as a bounce track? Based on the information I have mainly supplied by you at this point. Yeah. Yeah, I would say so. I mean, perhaps a bounce hybrid or something. I would love to know how this would play in a club in New Orleans and if it is. Yeah, I dug in and did some research.

It has a lot of supporters and other folks who are probably less excited about it as well. And I all, well, sorry to interrupt, but I also wonder if there are any like remixes that are even more hyper-bouncified or something. There are. There are some really, there are just like where it's pure, just like the breakdown all the way through. Right. There definitely are some great remixes. And similarly for me, this is not my culture. I did not know about bounce music.

But it totally excited my interest. And I've now gone off. I've bought a Big Frida album. It's amazing. I bought a fifth word. Weeby album. It's really great. Actually, I want to play one track just really quickly off of Big Frida has done a track with Lizzo called karaoke.

It's really fun. And you're going to hear a lot of that same sort of sound. Yeah. Come make a whisk and make them bounce. Pride on your lips. Come make that sound. If you got a big, then, big them, dark and brown. Isn't that fun?

Oh, man. I got to hear the rest of that. We love you, Lizzo. Oh, my gosh. We should just say that in every episode, probably. Well, and Big Frida. Oh, my gosh. What a track.

I thought you were going to bring something different to me, actually, with your track. Oh, and what was that? I thought you were going to talk about the deconstruction of pop form, which is one of your favorite topics these days. I was tempted, but then I got off on this other masculinity tip. I remember when we first heard this track earlier this summer and we had talked about it, I think the first reading of it, sort of purely as just sort of a musical reading was this doesn't have a normal song form. Ah, right, right, right. Right, because it has these bounce interludes.

And when I first heard those, I heard them decontextualized. And I was like, that's weird. Why does that work? Well, it works because it's just self-evident. I think it was the word that I'd used before. They just work. But it wasn't something I was that familiar with. And what I'm realizing is that this is not a change in song form.

This is a merging of other endemic song forms and other. even older song forms of call and response into a sort of pop vernacular or width. There are still some big hooks in these tracks, but they're interwoven. I like how you put it in my feelings

at one point towards the end, the last time around, they're inseparable. Right. No, no, I get that. It's like these bounce interludes become these eruptions into the conventional verse chorus form that they follow otherwise. And

I feel like we're back to a question you posed initially, which is like, is this okay? Is it? Because I mean, what you've convinced me of so strongly is that, man, the success of these songs, Draco's a lot to this genre and these artists. Immensely. Right. And we come back to a crossroads that popular music is constantly navigating. Right.

Where's the line between celebrating and promoting that subculture? Right. And exploiting it. Right. You know, as I said, I'm not even close to being armed to properly have that discussion because I don't think I have any skin in the game, right? Just not being of that culture. It's not for me to decide. In this case, I am thankful to have been informed, brought into, and now just overwhelmingly excited to get to listen to and celebrate the whole bounce music world. It's fantastic. No, and I mean, I think there is a case to be made that.

naming and representing these figures is important. And Drake does that. And working with that. He shouts them out. Yeah. Everyone gets a call out in these songs. Yeah. And so it's not hard to just go search black and mild, city girls,

whoever he's shouting out and plug it into Spotify or whatever and listen to a lot more. Yeah. Drake first Drake. Bounce off. Everyone wins. Well, that was a lot of fun. And, you know, we're going to be hearing these songs. constantly for a while to come, right? Definitely.

And I'm glad we went through them because I feel like I can listen to them with a little more nuance now. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And given that we're going to be hearing these on repeat everywhere we go, I think there's a lot to celebrate in here. You know what's something I've learned? What's that? If you're listening to a Drake track, maybe this is controversial, but listen to everything but Drake and you might find some really cool source material. The Drake stuff is good there too. But underneath, there's all these things that there's a lot of thought put in there. Yeah, he's, I hate to use this word, but he's almost like less of a pop artist than a pop curator.

Oh, absolutely. In fact, like his album has really totally mixed reviews. A lot of people sort of say, like, there is one good album on this double album. What have you done? And the thing is... Out of the 1,000 songs. Reviewing, I think reviewing anything that he's putting out at this point as an album is almost absurd because the way that he releases music feels more like social media distribution.

Right. And I don't mean that cynically. Like, I actually think he's just playing in a different cultural scene to a certain degree. Yeah. And that the albums are an older form. He's just sort of smashing all these things together onto an album. And there are bounce tracks. There's a whole sort of hip-hop side to the album.

There's an R&B. pop side to the album. There's all these different elements that are happening and maybe they don't collide into one body of work, but they're not being released that way. They're not being consumed that way. And you know what? You can cherry pick on a playlist whatever you like. I think

there's a reason why these tracks rise to the top. Well, okay, we really need to wrap this up. That does make me think of one thing, which is that like in a way that is Drake getting back to the original album. Not like, I think if we think of albums in the way that

We've been talked to think about them, like, post, I don't know, Sarton Pepper or something. Right. Like a coherent musical idea. Right. Like, you know, these, right, these Stevie Wonder, these, like, statements of a coherent A to Z, like, togetherness. Right. But, you know, of course, like, where does the name album come from, Charlie? Oh.

I'm clueless. It's an album, like a photo album. It's a photo album, yeah. Well, it's like, if we go back to the beginning of the 20th century, you know, you could only fit three and a half minutes of music on one side of a 78 RPM record. Right. Which sort of dictated the length of pop songs. Right.

And it meant that if you wanted to like listen to anything longer than, you know, two, three and a half minute sides, you had to just get more records. Right. And so if you're going to get a bunch of records and keep them in one place. You put them in an album. You put them in an album. So you would buy at some point you would start buying albums. It's like a compilation of all of these things. And then once the vinyl LP, literally the long playing record, comes out towards the end of the 1940s,

then you don't need 12 distinct 78 RPM discs. It's all on one, but the name remains. Even though it's a single disc, we still call it an album, an album of songs. And then the collage of songs, which have been previously disconnected. at some point the album becomes a form. People became very obsessed with that form for very long time. It doesn't make nearly as much sense anymore. Precisely.

But, you know, it's like same as it ever was, right? Same as it ever was. It's new, but it's also maybe as old as the birth of the recording industry. I've listened to a lot of stuff on Scorpion. There's things that are interesting. There's things I don't like. There's something for everybody. These two, who...

Okay, we really have to sign off now. This episode of Switched on Pop was produced and edited by me, Nate Sloan. me, Charlie Harding, our mixing, editing, engineering, and a little, like, extra magical touch is all done by Bill Lance. Our community manager is Sarah Terry, and our design is by Luke Harris. You can find more episodes at www.Switch onpop.com or any podcast player you like. We'll be back in two weeks with another one, and we are proud members of the Panoply Network. Until then, thanks for listening. me.